by Sara Alexi
‘Come on, donkey – help!’ With this, she jumps into the water and rummages for buckles and clasps, releasing the wooden saddle with its blanket covering, pushing it off onto the sand. Feeling along the donkey’s back, she finds its hind legs. The last time she was here, in this cove, she would have been out of her depth in the water that now seems relatively shallow. She bends her knees and puts her shoulder under the donkey’s rump to push. ‘Move!’ she shouts, and slaps its haunches, and immediately regrets this as the water around the donkey’s back end begins to turn red with blood. But the slap creates a reaction, and the animal weakly struggles. Her heart pounds and it is as if her strength doubles. She pushes as the front hooves momentarily scramble and the poor creature manages to pull itself more fully onto the beach.
‘Good girl. Go on!’ She wonders if the exertion has killed it, but then its chest labours.
‘How did you get here?’ she asks it breathlessly as she pushes its rump. Perhaps it has fallen from the coastal path that leads to Orino town, and floated here. If that is the case then it must have had quite a fall.
It is harder to get out of the sea, given the steep gradient, than it was to get in, but she has energy she did not know she possessed and is crouching by the donkey’s head in seconds. She has not managed to move the animal far up the beach, but it is mostly out of the water now, and the sun will warm it once its coat dries out.
‘Just lay there, my beauty,’ she tells it. Maybe she should run to the boatyard for help. With tender fingers she slips off the bridle.
The sun is still rising and now it peeps past the top of the fig tree, casting its warm and healing rays on the shoulder of the beast. Another five minutes and its head is in sunshine, its fur drying fast. As the donkey warms up, its breathing becomes more even, less laboured, and the panic that was in its eyes dims.
It would be better if she could get its back leg out of the water to see what the damage is. The animal also needs to be out of the water so it can dry fully, stay warm.
Looking around the cove, she searches for anything useful that might have been washed ashore. The inevitable beer bottle is half buried, and by a rock sits what looks like a black fly swat and the pink of a plastic clothes peg. Further along the short stretch of sand lies a sun-decayed plastic bag and a half-buried aluminium pan without a handle. As if to mock the situation, sitting upright by the water’s edge, bright in the sun, is a modest-sized yellow rubber duck, the kind sold for children to play with in the bath. Its orange beak is slightly the worse for wear. There is nothing else, useful or otherwise.
A slight breeze reminds her that her own clothes are wet now.
‘Scarf!’ She rouses herself as she unwraps the length of material from around her head and neck. She does not have to get back into the water to loop it around the donkey’s rump and, with one end of the scarf in each hand, she tries once more to slide the donkey all the way onto dry land. As she does so the animal’s head is repositioned relative to its body. After dragging the beast sideways onto the shore, she is much relieved to see that the donkey is alive enough to move its head so as not to twist its neck.
The back legs are all black with wet, which accentuates the pink and bloody split in its skin and muscle. Rallou clicks her tongue against the back of her teeth. They may be tough little beasts when they are well but that is a wound that will be hard to recover from. What is worse is the gash lower down, near its hoof. If the tendon is gone then there will be nothing much anybody can do for the poor ass.
Chapter 12
She needs to get some help, find out whose the donkey is, and get in touch with the owner. After laying her wet scarf over some low-slung fig branches to dry, she heads for the path that leads out of the cove. Halfway up, moving with speed, she grabs a handful of the fleshy, slightly spiky leaves growing from a crevice for support. The whole plant comes away from the rock face, leaving her off balance. At this moment, a new thought hits her.
‘No!’ she cries, and, using her instability to her advantage, she twists and, more quickly than she ascended, part-runs, part-slides back down to the donkey to look again at the animal’s leg.
‘There’s a good chance they will shoot you in your condition, little donkey,’ she says to the animal, the verbalisation of this thought helping her to come to terms with it. ‘If I get help and they think the damage is too great …’ The sentence trails away.
Maybe she can help the animal to recover sufficiently so they would not consider shooting him. She has the patience to help it heal. She can remember nights sitting up with one or another of the children, mopping fevered brows, reading stories, telling tales, and changing the sheets as they sweated out their illnesses. She would never leave their side. Harris saw this, and praised and encouraged her. Christos also commented, but not in the same way. Yes, she could help the donkey heal. But every owner is different, and who is to say what this donkey’s owner would think of that? She crouches and strokes the mule’s forehead, pushing its fringe from its eyes.
‘How well will you have to be to assure your future, my furry friend?’ she asks it.
Still in her other hand are the fleshy leaves that came away from the rock face.
‘Samphire,’ she announces and puts the plant to the donkey’s lips. ‘Are you hungry?’ She asked the same question of little Natasa, her forehead so hot, her eyes so wide, hugging her bear before the fever broke. How she sweated and cried, poor little thing. Rallou sat by her bed day and night, ready with a glass of water and morsels of food to tempt her back to her happy little self.
‘You not coming to bed then?’ Christos had asked. She didn’t bother to answer. ‘You will be good for nothing if you are too tired. Go to bed and I will sit with her for a while,’ he pressed.
But sitting with little Natasa ‘for a while’ was not good enough. What if she woke in the middle of the night with no one there, or got worse? No, she had to stay. That’s what mamas do. If Natasa fell asleep she would wake at the slightest sound, whereas Christos would sleep through anything.
Maybe this is the same situation. Maybe this donkey also needs a mama’s touch, that extra bit of care, just until it can get on its feet again. The mule’s lips curl over the succulent plant and it makes an attempt to chew, but lying on its side seems to make this difficult. Perhaps she should treat the wound first. Help its recovery first, then tempt it to eat.
‘I need myriofyllo, or aloe vera, or even sempervivum,’ she tells it. There may be some myriofyllo left in the shade of the trees further up the hill if she is lucky, but spring has come and gone and the heat and sun may have shrivelled any remaining plants. Her best bet is probably the aloe vera that Kaloyannis’s grandfather has planted around the edge of his abandoned olive orchard. There must be a dozen plants there, now growing wild. Leaving the donkey bravely trying to chew, she heads off up the path out of the cove again, her legs moving with purpose, finding her footing. The olive grove is not far along a rough rack, which is overgrown with long grasses. Brightly coloured grasshoppers jump and whir out of her way as she passes, making a wave with each step. She finds the plants and takes two or three leaves from each, pulling them back on themselves to tear them free, being careful of the spiky edges. She gathers an armful and carries them back to the cove, and notes that, although she tried to be careful to avoid the thorns, her arms are coming up in a red rash.
Back in the cove she searches her bags to see what her baba has put in apart from bread and feta. There are the eggs, of course, and he has also popped in a tin of sardines and a sharp knife.
‘Bless you,’ she calls to him and pictures the wind whipping her words up the valley to the top of the island.
She tentatively puts her hand above the gash by the animal’s hoof and is relieved to find it is not hot and there are no signs of infection. This gives her hope. Using the point of the knife she carefully lifts the flap of skin to examine it more closely. The gash looks horrible but it is not too deep, and the donkey does not react. Maybe it is not as
bad as she first thought.
Cutting both ends off one of the aloe vera leaves, she deftly strips off the thick green outer coat to reveal the transparent gelatinous interior. This she slices thinly, then she lays the pieces side by side to cover the whole wound. When she runs out she begins on a second leaf, then a third and a fourth. Once both wounds are covered with the aloe vera gel, she continues to strip the leaves and then scrapes out the viscous secretion that lies just beneath the outer coating, to form a layer over the more solidified gel strips.
Once the wound is awash with aloe vera goodness in all its forms she allows herself to relax. This will speed the healing process, form a protective barrier and keep flies from landing on the raw flesh. She rubs her hands together and wipes what’s left of the sticky gel on her face. It will do her good too.
The serum dries quite quickly, first on her skin and then on the wounds. As time passes, the gelatinous strips oxidise and turn a dull pinky-red, becoming firmer to the touch. In a few hours she will very carefully remove the strips, if they will lift, and replace them with fresh pieces. She has brought enough leaves to the cove to repeat this several times.
Hunger begins to remind her how long it has been since breakfast and she contemplates boiling some of the eggs. She could use the abandoned pan that is half buried in the sand and boil them in seawater, but does she have matches? As it turns out, she does not, neither in her bags nor in her pockets, so she settles for the bread and feta. With a full stomach she decides that a second application of aloe vera will not harm the donkey, and maybe the fresher the serum is the quicker the wound will heal. The sun is now quite high and it is hot, but the aloe vera strips will keep the wounds cool and the fig tree provides some shade. She shuffles backward and leans against the saddle to survey her charge in the relative cool, and soon sleep takes her.
She wakes slowly, thinking at first that the donkey is actually Natasa and that she has failed to be vigilant. But as she comes to her senses she remembers where she is and recalls the whole situation, and wonders how long she slept.
The wound on the animal’s hindquarters has now taken on a pinkish tinge and is firm to the touch, oxidised. She wonders if she should apply fresh gel, but she has used up all the leaves, and the discarded green shells are now curled and hard where she piled them. The gash above the donkey’s hoof looks even better than she had hoped, and perhaps it won’t be a problem at all.
Rallou’s next hour is spent gathering more aloe vera and treating both the wounds, and in this time the donkey lifts its head once or twice to look over its shoulder at what she is doing. The plant is so gentle it causes no sting or suffering and she can already see the difference its medicinal properties are making.
The donkey occasionally tries to nibble a little at the samphire but with no great enthusiasm. The afternoon is passing quickly, and it would be better if they could move away from the water’s edge before evening as the night will be very cold on the beach at this time of year. Even in the hottest days of August the nights are chilly right down by the water.
‘Why aren’t you trying to get up?’ she says to the donkey on several occasions, but it continues to lie there, blinking, occasionally sighing, but making no attempt to stand. She needs to take some action, make sure its night is comfortable enough and that it is warm enough to sleep. Rest is the best medicine.
‘Sleep, my little Natasa,’ she whispered. ‘Sleep my little doll.’ The child’s fever broke eventually, and colour returned to her cheeks but the whole ordeal frightened the life out of Rallou.
‘You need to sleep too.’ Christos put his head around the door.
She did need to sleep, she really did, but what if Natasa got worse again? What if she cried out and Rallou did not hear? No, she had better stay here.
‘Rallou, come, you must sleep, you cannot keep up this vigil,’ Christos urged, but she did not answer him and he shrugged and left, and his snoring could be heard shortly afterwards. He was right, she was overcome with exhaustion; but in her mind it was not her own daughter’s light breathing she could hear in the night, but the whimperings of Evgenia as her burns continued to eat into her skin as the days after the accident passed and nothing could be done for her.
The donkey shivers.
‘Oh, my little koukla,’ she says softly. ‘Hang on, I will get you a blanket.’
The walk to the boatyard is not a long one, and the light in the windows of the Kaloyannis house glow like orange eyes in the near dark, casting a subdued light over the yard. The grounded boats are held on their keels by wooden supports on either side as if they each have six or eight legs: an army of giant wooden insects ready to come alive when the sun rises again. If she does not hurry, the light will fade completely and she will find it difficult to get back down to the cove unless there is a full moon. She ducks from boat to boat, making sure that if anyone is looking from the window they will not see. The Kaloyannis brothers and their family are good people and it is natural that they would phone around the island to find the donkey’s missing owner, but that would come with such a risk! She keeps moving until she finds a fishing boat, one that looks like it is being recaulked, which has a tarpaulin folded neatly inside it. With this tucked under her arm she makes her way back. The waxed sheet is heavy but it will keep them both warm. The donkey needs a name. She called it her little koukla – doll – earlier. Adults are always calling children their little dolls. She misses her own little dolls, and the role she played as their mama. At one point, motherhood felt like her mission in life, and there is a gap now the children are all gone. She never thought about how it would be once they had all left home until it actually happened. Now the reality is there for her every day, and she is becoming increasing aware that there is very little left to fulfil her life. Except the Americans. But is that really a good use of someone’s life, she wonders for the first time – to play servant to the rich, no matter how nice they are?
It is almost dark as she reaches the descent to the cove and as she nears the bottom she can see the donkey scrabbling a little. It must be very aware that it is bait for dogs just lying there.
‘It’s all right, my little koukla, it is only me.’ The donkey is also afraid of the tarpaulin as she opens it out. It is bigger than she thought and she doubles it over to make two layers. Curling into the mule’s back, transferring her warmth to it and vice versa, she feels sleepy but strangely happy. There is no moonlight and she does not know if the donkey closes its eyes first or if she does.
Chapter 13
The next day she repeats the aloe vera treatment a few times, again pouring the viscous liquid between the jelly-like strips to make sure the wounds are fully coated, and she swears she can almost see the healing taking place. But she worries that the donkey has not tried to stand yet. Maybe it has hurt itself internally, or it is wounded on its other side, the side that it is lying on. As she ate most of the feta yesterday, and she fed most of the bread to the donkey, there is not much of either left. She cleans out the saucepan that was half buried in the sand in case she decides to boil the eggs but then remembers that she has no matches. She is well aware that Greg will now be sleeping in fairly dirty sheets. The last thing she wants is for Lori and Ted to think she is shirking her responsibilities. She looks at the animal, unsure that she can leave it. Apart from being a living creature, it is also someone’s livelihood, someone who is on the island, not half a world away in America.
But in reality there is not much more she can do. It is just a waiting game. If she keeps applying the aloe vera, she feels almost certain, the wounds will heal, all will be well. But the beast has not tried to stand, not really, and the bread it ate was such a small amount.
On the waves of the sea the memory comes to her of a conversation that she once overheard between Baba and Yanni. It ripples up the inlet to her like a gift. She looks up and out to the entrance of the cove, the shoreline of which is so convoluted she cannot see the sea.
In her mind’s eye sh
e can see the two men standing, facing each other, hands in pockets, talking.
‘Ah, you see, if donkeys don’t eat they are very susceptible to …’ And the wave recedes, leaving the sentence unfinished as her memory fades. She cannot remember the word, but when she blinks slowly it comes back to her.
‘Hyperlipaemia, especially after stress,’ Yanni’s voice says.
It was a time when her baba visited her in town. Every day he sat in the back yard looking a little lost until Yanni passed by on his way into town for his day’s work hauling things from the port to people’s houses and shops, or later, in the early evening when he began his return journey home. Her baba would call something out to him, a cheerful kalimera, causing him to stop to answer, and a conversation would always develop. Rallou knew Yanni’s mountain mentality suited her baba more than her own way of thinking, which was now more aligned to that of her neighbours in the town.
‘Not much chance of them living if they get that,’ Yanni had continued. ‘More so if they are old or overweight.’
Rallou looks at the donkey; it is not fat, but it does look like it could be old, with its white muzzle and whiskers around its eyes.
‘Don’t die,’ she tells it gently as the rest of the conversation comes to her: if a donkey does not eat but expends a lot of energy then it turns to its fat reserves like all animals, but, as Yanni explained to her baba, donkeys are not able to turn off the fat release process and their blood can become saturated with fat, leading to liver and kidney failure.
‘That’s a strange reaction,’ her baba had said.
‘But how soon does that happen?’ she asks the absent Yanni.
‘People don’t understand donkeys,’ Yanni had gone on to explain. ‘They say they are stubborn, but that is because they have this cut-off mechanism so you cannot work them too hard. Their systems will just stop and they won’t move if they are overtaxed. Horses do not have this, and you can work them to death, but it is not so with donkeys.’